Mobile Boost

I’ve mentioned before that I have a mobile (aka. wireless but not to be confused with wifi)) broadband modem I use when I am out and about. It is very useful for things like meetings and when travelling. One problem I have found though is that there are some areas that don’t have good coverage. I often use it at a friends place and there the signal is quite variable. Sometimes it will work but usually it won’t maintain a connection there.

In an attempt to solve this I recently purchased an antenna for the modem. Some modems have a port to plug in an antenna and fortunately my Huawei E169 does. It arrived in a couple of days which is great service. I plugged it in and the signal strength seemed higher and steadier. It has a desktop base and a clip that will clip to the netbook’s screen. It fitted well without touching the actual screen too.

The real test came a few days later when I was at my friends place again. I was able to connect and maintain a workable connection. A great improvement. I don’t use it all the time but in the places I need it it is invaluable.

I don’t say it will allow a connection everywhere but in areas where there is a signal but it isn’t strong enough to use the antenna will make a difference.

Tech & Travel

Over the past weekend I had reason to read the journal I kept of a driving trip I took about a decade ago. It was a driving holiday around northern NSW and Queensland, over 4000 kms all together. It reminded me how valuable a journal can be. Most entries were only a few paragraphs but reading them brought back so much about that trip that I had forgotten. But I digress, that wasnt the reason behind this post.

I started to think how much things have changed in such a short time, at least where tech is concerned. The only tech items I took with me were a phone and video camera. The phone’s only additional feature I used was the clock and alarm which woke me on a couple of mornings when departure time was important. The video was an vhs-c, old even then. My camera was a manual slr. For navigation I relied on on several paper maps, many of which proved to be out of date. The journal was written with pen and paper, actually a fountain pen something I still love to use.

If I was going today, I pause to dream for a while…ahh!., I would take a lot more. Immediately I add a netbook or laptop complete with mobile broadband. It would assist in navigation with access to mapping sites. It would hold my journal and serve as a repository for photos I take. A portable hard drive for backups would be essential.

I couldn’t imagine going anywhere without a satnav unit. It would be used while travelling with the computer used for planning. There were times when I wasn’t sure where I was but that was part of the fun.

I noticed from my notes how conservative I was taking photos. Probably due to the cost and availiability of film and processing. These days I take more shots on a day trip than I took in a week on that trip. There are several times I wish I had stopped to take more photos. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

One thing that wouldn’t change was the vehicle. It is still going strong and I wouldn’t think twice to set off in it again. But that is a bit off topic.

So would I have a better trip? Well I would take more photos and that is important to me. I would have a better idea where I was and where I was going so that might make it easiest. But either way it was a trip to remember and that was the most important thing.

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64 Bit Flash

Well Adobe has finally released an updated Flash for 64 bit Linux. Previously they had removed support for it due to some security issues. The new driver appeared a few days ago. It seems to offer some improvement in stability too so is a must install if you have 64 bit.

As usual the best guide for Fedora people to access it is through the Fedora forum. Thanks to Leigh who packages it for the community.

KDE 4.5 In Fedora 13

KDE released version 4.5 some time ago. However it hasn’t appeared in Fedora 13. There is some suggestion that it will be saved for Fedora 14. Of course this brought the question can it be installed on Fedora 13?

There is a thread on the Fedora Forum that provides the answer. I have used it one computer for a couple of weeks without issue although it has some quirks that suggest it is not the final version. If you want to give it a go have a look at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=250066

New KDE Page

I’ve added a new page with hints and tips for KDE. It is based on Fedora 13 running KDE 4.4 but should be reasonably accurate for most recent distros.

It isn’t designed to be a full how to for KDE, see the KDE site for that, but just a list of things I have learnt. It started as my own notes but I decided it might be useful for others so I tidied it up a little and here it is. It isn’t complete, I will add to it from time to time. Any suggestions or questions are welcome.

Fedora 13

I’ve been rather busy lately. (click here if you want to know why) so haven’t been blogging here at all. By the way that site is on WordPress too, good option for our ‘not for profit’ group. But when I did have some time for myself I installed Fedora 13 on my laptop. Once again no problems, everything worked out of the box but I made the usual improvements.

My nvidia graphics card has needed the proprietary drivers in the past but I was hoping the improvements to Nouveau would make that un-necessary this time. It is possible to get 3D using Nouveau and mesa-dri-drivers-experimental but not with my GeForce 8400 GS so I’m back with the drivers from RPMFusion again.

In KDE knetworkmanager has replaced the networkmanager-gnome applet which is an interesting change. If you are using KDE you should use its utilities but it hasn’t been stable in past versions. This time it works well but doesn’t have the wizards the gnome version has. Maybe they will follow.

The new version of Conky (1.8.0) now supports transparency so the steps needed to make it work in KDE using feh are no longer needed. A good improvement.

I’ve been using Google Chrome as my browser for a while. It is faster then Firefox and has most of the extensions. I tried the open source version, Chromium, but found it too unstable for everyday use so back to Chrome.

The need to edit the hal fdi policy files to get touchpad options such as “tap to click” working has been overcome now. KDE has a touchpad option in the settings and it works well.

Overall I’m very pleased with Fedora 13 and when the opportunity arises I will install it on my other computers.

Browsing

I haven’t been here for a while, I know, so here is something I’ve found recently. I have been using Firefox as my main browser since before it reached ver 1 but lately I felt it was getting slower. I have tried a few others, Konquerer, the default browser on KDE is quite good but had some problem with a couple of sites. I really liked Arora but I had become addicted to some of the add-ons in Firefox and Arora is a no frills browser.

Then I found Chrome by Google. Chrome is based on the open source Chromium and is easily the fastest browser I have used. It is still in beta, well it is a Google product, but I’ve found it quite stable.

Best of all it has most of the popular extensions that have made Firefox so powerful. Some of them are also still in development. I’ve had problems syncing with Xmarks, for example. I replaced the Gmail signature add-on I was using with Autopen which is much better. One disappointment is that Cooliris is only available for Windows at the moment. A linux and Mac version has been promised for a while but is still to appear.

I’ve had no problem getting You Tube to work and downloads seem to be handled better than Firefox too. One thing I would like to change is to have Chrome more integrated into the desktop. It doesn’t pick up display properties from the desktop but uses it’s own. Still I would recommend it, give it a try.

Mandatory Internet Filter

It seems our government is ignoring all the advice the contrary and public opinion and aiming to introduce mandatory filtering with the legislation coming before parliament later next year. Of course they are hiding behind the child pornography issue but many people don’t realise that much more will be blocked.

The Google blog covered this in a reasonable article here. Well worth your time to read it if you are concerned about basic rights in this country.

Fedora 12

I have been trying out the new verison of Fedora since it was released a couple of weeks ago. This version is more of a evolutionary update rather than a major change, at least in KDE. F12 comes with the same version 4.3.2 that F11 was running. An update to 4.3.3 has been released for both versions since then.

That is not to say there haven’t been changes just that the majority are behind the scene improvements. A list of the changes are on the release notes.

Moblin Added

One of the changes to F12 is the release of Moblin for Fedora. Unfortunately it is currently based on Moblin 2.0 instead of the current 2.1. I installed it on my netbook and gave it a run for a few days. It is obviously in the early stages of development as some of the basic features are missing. There is no way to log out for example.

I liked the basic concept but don’t think it is quite ready for day to day use yet. I went back to KDE.

Network Manager

For a few versions now Fedora has worked well with Mobile Braodband but this verison includes some big changes in that area.

One big improvement is the provision of preset configuration for many Broadband providers. When you connect for the first time it asks you for your country and isp as well as type of service and then it connects with the correct setup.

It seems to work well. However one problem, probably not associated with the changes, is it is not possible to reconnect should you disconnect. You need to unplug the modem and plug it back in again. An irritation but not a major problem unless you are working in an area with poor reception.

Nvidia Cards

The open source nvidia driver nouveau has been improved for this version. Reports are that it is much more stable than previous versions. It still doesn’t do 3d so you need to install the propriety drivers if you want Google Earth, desktop effects or other 3d apps. There is a how to on the Guide section of the Fedora Forums. There is some extra steps due to a new version of x.org.

Atom Processors

Atom processors are common in netbooks and this version of Fedora has been optimised for them. I noticed some improvement in the performance of my netbook. I am using KDE on there now and find it is performing so well I haven’t felt the need to install Xfce which I did in F11.

Overall I would say this is a good update of Fedora especially if you use netbooks or Mobile Broadband. If you are using F11 and it is working fine for you there is no hurry to update though.